Cool things I followed via Tech Crunch Live cast, Twitter, Huffington Post, cNet and daily CES briefings I receive as a CEA Alumni...
- Intel touting (And giving away from their booth) the newest Lenovo Windows super slim Ultrabook notebook. It's called the IdeaPad Yoga. Designed to compete with my 4 year old MacBook Air, they look great and are ready for the Windows 8 tablet/PC OS to be released later in 2012. Yoga's most special feature that will impress is its ability to rotate the screen and become a Windows 8 tablet, almost independent of its keyboard. Looks to sell in the $1200 range. Great for sales presentations, ShopSIGNARAMA designing at a client's workplace, designing a shirt online... get it?
- Netgear releases a WiFi dual band extender, this handy $90 box brings more range to 2.4 GHz and 5GHz band wireless networks. If you have a big area or complex construction materials that prohibit good wireless signals in your building... hint, hint, this will help.
- Fuji introduces their first interchangeable lens compact digital camera the X-Pro 1. It does 16 megapixel photos, 10 frames per second video, but most importantly, allows for lens swaps. Wide angle, portrait and zoom lenses will be available at release. Price expected at $1300-1500. Gulp!
- Microsoft says they'll have a Windows version of their popular XBOX accessory Kinect at the beginning of Feb. Yes, this is initially slated for gaming, but Microsoft has a winner with this unique technology, if they harness it as a new user interdface for other things in Windows 8 on the PC... cool possibilities.
- Seagate, maker of portable storage products, announces a Thunderboly adapter for their drives.
This means that their products can interface with the superfast Thunderbolt ports on newer Mac computers. No, it doesn't magically turn your older Seagate drive into a Thunderbolt device, but at least you don't have to buy a new storage device to work with the new Thunderbolt ports. May all new technologies come with the considerations of those that existed beforehand and make accomodations like this for loyal users!
- Last CES, I was very excited about Logitech's implementation of Google TV. That eventually flopped, no reason why, it worked nicely when I saw it. Now Vizio, the economy priced TV you see in COSTCO, will be teaming up with Google TV to release a system this summer. Maybe an appeal to the masses with less expensive entry point to combat the impending release of an Apple TV is Google and Visio's idea? It's not less expensive than the Logitech/Google TV offering, but it will be all ready to go as a part of their TVs. Worth a look this summer, they'll be easy to buy, Vizio has good coverage in stores.
More CES goodies coming!